


Exeunt

by sahem62896



Category: Oz (TV)
Genre: Gen, M/M, Multi, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-24
Updated: 2014-03-24
Packaged: 2018-01-16 20:19:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,079
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1360456
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sahem62896/pseuds/sahem62896
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Alternate ending to Beecher and Keller's relationship in "Oz"</p>
            </blockquote>





	Exeunt

**Author's Note:**

> If you were like me and couldn't believe the ending to the relationship between Keller and Beecher in the HBO series "Oz," here's an alternative ending. As usual, I own nothing related to either the creations of Tim Fontana and company or to Jim Morrison and company. This is for fun... and here is the end.  
> \----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

_"This is the end, beautiful friend..." —The Doors_

 

"If you really love me, then leave me alone."

Keller stood there, dumbstruck. "I can't," he said after a bit.

Beecher was verge of tears. His nose was already congested as if he had been crying for a long time. In a way, he had been. Unwittingly stabbing Vern Schillinger to death in the middle of the prison's performance of _Macbeth_ had just been the most recent in a series of bloody events that had both his own name and Keller's on it. For five years, there had been mind games, violence, and hopes that had been repeatedly built up and then dashed to pieces. Now Beecher was exhausted in the classic sense of the word; there was nothing left inside for him to draw upon in order to face one more thing. "Listen to me, listen to me!" he pleaded. "I loved alcohol. I loved heroin. I had to put them behind me because they were poison... death." He paused to let the words sink in and also to build up the courage to say the next, and hopefully the last, thing to Keller:

"You are death. Let me live."

There were a couple of beats of silence, then Keller swallowed, closed his eyes, and nodded. As he heard Keller draw in a shuddery breath, Beecher thought that maybe he had finally gotten through the man's hard exterior and even a few of the tougher internal layers to the man's heart. Then he felt Keller's hands close around his neck and saw spit shining on his teeth.

"I can't!" Keller hissed.

"Motherfucker!"

Beecher tried to break free of Keller's grip and push him away, but Keller's hands remained firm. Soon the two men were in a struggle, wrestling like they had in the gym in the early days of their turbulent relationship. Keller was reaching for Beecher's face, trying to draw him near, but also backing up to the rail. Even in the heat of the moment, Beecher was aware of how perilously close that rail was getting and knew wouldn't take much to send them both over it to the floor some twenty feet below where they would both suffer head trauma and broken bones.

That was, of course, if the fall didn't kill them.

"Toby, I love you..." Keller whispered.

Some survival instinct — one that had been sharpened to a very fine point by six years of treachery and manipulation in Oz — kicked in, and Beecher stopped pushing Keller away. A second later, as he felt Keller's arms go ever so slightly slack, Beecher's hands landed on the sides of Keller's face and pulled it towards his own as hard as they could. Their foreheads met with a bump that was heard just as much as it was felt. It sent both men reeling to the floor, their embrace broken. Keller dropped to his knees and then plopped down face first outside the pod, crying out in pain as his nose smashed against the tile. Beecher remained on his feet at first but two steps into his attempt to walk away, he fell drunkenly against the plexiglass wall of the pod and slid down it, rubbing his forehead.

"Aw, Jesus fuckin' Christ," Keller groaned as he tried to get up again.

Beecher opened his eyes and the whole world seemed to be spinning and flipping. For an instant, his vision focused and he could see Keller trying to push himself on to his feet. He moaned thickly and tried to scramble away, but his head felt like it would fall right off his neck if he moved. Keller took one staggering step and then collapsed against the plexiglass with a thud. He sank and landed on his ass with his legs splayed in front of him. Beecher tried to get up again and only succeeded in making it to his hands and knees. He tried to shake away the pain, but it made the dizziness worse. By then, the air was full of the thudding of boot heels as the hacks rushed to investigate all the noise and maybe break up a fight.

Beecher closed his eyes and tried to fight off another wave of dizziness and pain. When he opened them, he saw three pairs of black boots in front of his nose. Craning his neck up, he saw their owners, who looked both displeased and also amused. He glanced once over his shoulder and saw Keller sitting forward with his knees bent, his feet on the floor, and his mouth agape. A large knot had formed in the center of his forehead, and a small trickle of blood dripped from one nostril. He looked shocked, as if he couldn't believe he had just been head-butted and fallen on his face.

"Oh, what's this?" said one of the hacks. He had a thick New Jersey accent so that his words came out sounding like ' _aw watziss._ ' "Havin' another fuckin' lovers' quarrel here?" Another one, a woman, snickered behind him.

 _Yeah, it's just more of the same old shit_ , Beecher thought before his head rolled forward like a balloon on a stick and he collapsed onto the floor himself.

* * *

Sitting outside of McManus's office a few minutes later, waiting for a either reprimand or an okay to move to another pod, Beecher's mind was a mess. Too many questions whirled around inside his aching skull, not the least important of which were when all this bullshit with Keller was finally going to end and just how much more could he take until then. The more he thought about it, the more appealing the opportunity to get another chance at parole looked. Special Agent Taylor of the FBI had promised Beecher just such a reward if he agreed to rat Keller out for the murders of the gay men in Chelsea. Maybe that was what it was going to have to take to get this guy out of his life for good. Yes, he still loved Chris Keller and he knew that Keller loved him back in his own selfish, desperate way. However, the consequences weren't worth the pleasure of his company anymore. Not long after he had been arrested for parole violation and shipped back to Emerald City (one more thing he apparently had to thank Keller for), Beecher had told Keller in the gym that he wished he had left him on Death Row. Now, with a bump on his forehead and a rising sense of urgency, he was starting to think that maybe it wasn't just something rash he had said in a moment of anger. Maybe the son of a bitch deserved to be back in line to ride Ol' Sparky. After all, Keller had could have killed them both just a second ago, and...

Beecher bolted upright in the chair. Realization crept over his face, and right behind it came shock.

 _Holy shit!_ he thought. _He was trying to... fucking trying to... because I..._

He couldn't make himself finish the thought. Even trying to assign the appropriate words to it chilled him to the bone.

On more than one occasion and not too idly, Beecher had wondered if one of them was going to have to die in order to make this miserable emotional roller coaster stop. Such thoughts had been persistent in the period of time between the afternoon that Keller had handcuffed him to a chair backstage and disclosed his plans to dispose of Schillinger while trying to seduce him and the final act of _Macbeth_ when he saw Schillinger's blood on his own hands and realized in horror that Keller had swapped his prop knife with a real one. They had been even more constant during the investigation into the killing, especially as he sat before Warden Querns saying nothing that would incriminate Keller or himself but knowing the truth was practically blowing in his ear. Those thoughts, compounded by Querns's incredible ruling of Schillinger's death as an accident, had convinced Beecher more than anything that Keller had the luck of the Devil himself. That had frightened Beecher in much the same way that he had been frightened when Keller had gotten away with murdering two other prisoners in Oz, all of whom had fucked Beecher during one of their relationship's many hostile intermissions. The only difference was that this time the fear had pushed Beecher into revulsion instead of forcing him to cower in submission. Had he been cowering, he certainly never would have even agreed to meet with Agent Taylor in the first place. Taylor, who had been working tirelessly to settle the score ever since his last attempt to keep Keller on Death Row had been thwarted, was out for blood and Beecher knew it long before he ever walked into that room. But Taylor had driven the point home by opening a blind during their conversation as Keller just happened to be walking by the room so that Keller could see the two of them talking. And of course, his motive for doing that was not to strike fear into Keller's heart, but instead into Beecher's.

"Now that he's seen us chatting together, he'll start to sweat, wondering whether you'll give him up or not," Taylor had warned him. "To guarantee your silence, he might do something nasty."

Any fool who had seen them together could have figured out that Taylor was playing Beecher like a harp from Hell at that moment, and Keller was no fool. The problem was that Taylor was right; he and Beecher both knew that Keller tended to hedge his bets on such matters. The last inmate in Oz who had discussed those murders with Taylor, young Ronnie Barlog, had been found in a storage room with his neck snapped not long after their conversation. Barlog and Keller had been friends too, long before they were reunited in Oz. 'Partners' was, in fact, the word Barlog had used, though he had never said exactly what kind of partnership he and Keller had once had. He knew what it had been in Oz, though. It didn't matter one way or the other; the man had ended up just as dead as those guys in Chelsea.

_And so had Schillinger... his other partner._

Yes, Schillinger had been his partner too, both here in Oz and in Lardner many years earlier. In Lardner, their partnership was about Keller's survival. In Oz, their partnership was about Beecher's demise... that is, until Keller's survival came into question again.

_To guarantee your silence, he might do something nasty._

_Yeah,_ Beecher thought, _like set me up to kill Schillinger in order to fix it so that I can't possibly get paroled... or worse, to scare me into realizing that I could be set up or killed as easily to keep me from coöperating with the FBI._

Beecher tried to tell himself that that was impossible. After all, Keller had told him while he was handcuffed to that chair that he was playing along with Schillinger in order to keep him safe until he could figure out a way to kill the old Nazi.

 _Even if that were true,_ his fevered brain answered back, _do you really think he fucked up your parole and brought you back here because he can't live without you? Please. The only thing he can't live without is someone to control. And let's face it... he needs to control you because the best way for him to guarantee that you watch your mouth outside of Oz is to make damn sure you are never outside of Oz. Throwing Schillinger under the bus the way he did was about making sure you let your guard down while you were here. Don't be stupid, Toby._

He tried to swallow the obstruction that had suddenly grown his throat and couldn't.

_You are death. Let me live._

_I can't!_

But Beecher knew that wasn't true.

Keller could let him live, but he was not going to.

Beecher stood up, not sure anymore if he was dizzy from the head-butt he had given Keller or from the one his own mind had delivered to him while he sat outside of McManus's office. On legs that felt like rubber, he walked back to his pod. He could still hear his heart thudding in his chest as he did so, and it sounded like a death knoll.

* * *

Keller stood with his palms pressed against the transparent wall of the pod and his head down. He looked to Beecher like a man trying to walk through gale force winds and blinding rain or one who was trying to push the plexiglass out of its frame in order to escape. He also looked as defeated as a quarterback who had watched in dismay as his master plan for a grand touchdown had ended in an interception and a successful dash to the other side of the field. As the door opened and Beecher walked in, Keller looked over his shoulder and straightened himself to a stand. For a moment, the two of them just stood there, less than three feet apart, watching to see who was going to make the first move.

It turned out to be Keller. "How's your head?" he asked colorlessly.

"How's your nose?" Beecher retorted.

Keller couldn't help smiling. "You know," he said, wagging his index finger at Beecher, "I honestly didn't see that one coming. You got me good."

Beecher didn't smile back or say anything. He caught a quick glimpse of himself in the mirror on the wall over the tiny sink and observed that he had appeared to have aged ten years or so in the last hour.

"Look, Beecher," Keller said after a pause, "Maybe you're right. This rooming together thing might not be a good idea, but you shouldn't have to leave since you were here first, so I'll...."

"When are you going to do it?" Beecher interrupted.

Keller shrugged. "I guess as soon as McManus get back, though I thought by now he..."

"That's not what I mean."

Keller was put off pace momentarily. He knit his eyebrows together. "When am I going to do what?" he asked.

"Kill me." Beecher answered.

The lines in Keller's forehead got deeper, even around the bump on his own forehead. "What're you..."

"No more games, Chris," Beecher said. "I know you saw me and Agent Taylor talking, and that's why you wanted move back in here with me. I also know that killing Schillinger was just a way to get me to think you were on my side. You probably even knew that I was going to object to all this, and so you started a fight with me about it so that you could pitch me over that rail." Beecher pointed out the glass to the spot where they had been grappling. "Well, since that's not going to happen anymore, why don't you just tell me when you are going to do it."

Keller swallowed so hard that Beecher heard it. "No, Toby..." he began.

"Just answer the question so that I know how much time I have to get in touch with my daughter to say goodbye," Beecher said.

"Toby, it's not what you think..."

Beecher began to laugh in spite of his fear and heartache. "You know, I was born at night, but it wasn't _last_ night. If you really..." He pinched the spot where his eyes met his nose to keep the tears from flowing, but they were going to come anyway. "Oh, fuck whether you love me or not, Chris! If you even _respect_ me, you'll tell me when you are going to do it!"

Except for the fading red blot on his forehead, Keller had gone white as a sheet and he looked utterly lost. He put his hands to his face and dragged them down so that his handsome features stretched ever so slightly. There was a long pause, and after taking a breath, Keller finally spoke. "It wasn't going to be you that went over the rail."

Confusion twisted Beecher's face. "What?"

"It wasn't going to be you that went over that rail," Keller repeated. His eyes met Beecher and a ghost of a smile touched the corners of his mouth.

Now it was Beecher who was rendered inarticulate. "But..."

"It was supposed to be me."

Beecher felt as though he had been head-butted again. Head-butted and punched in the gut was actually more like it; it hurt to breathe now. "You mean..."

Keller nodded and leaned his back against the plexiglass wall of the cell. His handprints were now two milky stains next to his own head. "I wasn't ever going to kill you, Toby." He folded his arms and shook his head as Toby stood there with his mouth hanging open, unable to speak, move, or even believe what he was hearing. "There was even a little part of me that hoped you'd even be happy to have me back in here with you, so that I wouldn't have to off myself in front of everyone in the fucking place, including you." He looked at Beecher's wide, glassy eyes and smiled. "But I also knew the other scenario was more likely. I was even going to make it dramatic and scream 'Beecher don't!' as I went over."

Beecher heard the tiny click of his teeth touching together as he closed his mouth. They started to grind ever so slightly.

"You know, if you hadn't caused such a fucking scene out there, I would have gone with the original plan which was for O'Reilly to sneak me in something from the infirmary or from his own private stash for me to take while you were sleeping."

"If _I_ hadn't caused a scene?" he asked, pointing a finger at his chest.

Keller shrugged, as if it were no big deal. "Well, it would have beaten what the Aryan's have coming for them."

Beecher still didn't know what that meant and didn't care for the moment. He pointed out the window again. "You would have gone over that rail, and I would have been charged for your murder," he whispered. It seemed to be the only volume at which he was capable of speaking. "I could have even been sent to Death Row for it."

Keller faced Beecher. "Assuming I died in the fall," he said.

"If you hadn't, I would have ended up in the hole and facing new charges for your attempted murder then!" Spit was starting to fly from Beecher's teeth.

Keller looked up as if he were thinking about it, then looked back at Beecher and shook his head. "Nah. If Querns could rule something as obvious as that fucking Nazi's death an accident, you think he would have wasted one second making a decisionon Killer Keller? Especially if the FBI was already coming back for round two and asking questions of his previous lover?"

The word 'lover' went straight to his heart and wrung it like a wet sponge, but the pain was blunted by the rest of that statement. The side of the emotional teeter-totter where outrage sat went up a little higher, and shock's end dropped an equal amount. "So Schillinger was just another pawn in your game, huh?"

Keller cocked his head to the side a bit looked at Beecher as if he were being deliberately thick. "When was he ever not one?"

"My God..."

"Hey, it was your chess lessons that taught me to think two moves ahead," Keller said.

Shock's side of the teeter-totter hit the dirt with a bang, and outrage bumped off the seat a bit as that side reached it's apex. "Don't you fucking _dare_ blame any of this on me!" Beecher hissed, his index finger jabbing at the air. "It's not ever been my fault that you have no goddamn fucking sense of morality and can't think about anyone but your own greedy ass!"

Keller's gaze went to the ground. "Yeah, you're right," he agreed. "It's not your fault. And the worst part of it is that no matter what I tell you now, you're now never going to believe anything that I said to you out there about doing what I did because I love you. You're going to think it was all just some fucking script."

"You've got that right, asshole!"

Keller closed his eyes and shook his head. "Boy, I really fucked this all up."

" _More than you'll ever fucking know!_ " Beecher screamed.

Keller opened his eyes and the look on his face changed to one Beecher had never seen before — one that Beecher thought Keller was actually impossible of making; it was shame. Pure, unadulterated _shame_. Shock gave an almighty push with its legs and shot straight up, sending outrage clunking to the ground. He felt his finger curl back into the fist and his hand drop to his side as he tried to digest what he was seeing.

The CO pounding on the glass made both of them jump. It was the same one with the Jersey accent who had made the quip about the lovers' quarrel. "Y'know, I'm already sick of both of yous!"

"Sorry for the noise," Beecher answered.

"I'm gonna drag both your asses to the hole if I hear one more fuckin' sound come out of this pod!"

"You won't," Keller said, still looking at the floor.

"Oh good! One of yous is finally gonna kill the other and be done with it?" ****

_'Ah goot! Wanna yuzz iz finely gunna kill da udda an' be dunwiddit?'_ read the imaginary subtitles Beecher saw beneath the hack's face. He shivered at the sight of them.

"Nah," Keller said, pushing himself away from the glass wall and walking to the doorway. He cast a sad glance at Beecher as he passed him. "I'm gonna let him live." He turned back to the hack in the doorway. "Excuse me," he muttered as he walked out. The CO watched him go, and then walked away himself.

Beecher stood in the center of the pod alone, looking at Keller's handprints on the glass. Not realizing he was doing it, he approached them and got lost in every line, eddy and swirl. Tears began to burn in his eyes again.

_I'm gonna let him live._

Through the glass between them, Beecher saw a small strip of the the main quad below and McManus coming out of a pod, rubbing his hands together as if he were drying them off. Keller approached him, flagging him down. McManus folded his arms and looked exasperated as Keller said whatever it was he had to say. Beecher raised his hand as if to put his palm against the print left on the glass, and then stopped, afraid of obliterating it with his own. Below him, McManus looked up questioningly as Keller pointed at Beecher's pod, then back at Keller. The image doubled as the tears rolled over his lower eyelid and gathered in the corners of his mouth.

_I'm gonna let him live._

McManus jerked a thumb over his shoulder and turned to walk in that direction. Keller followed behind. The two men disappeared out of the field of view. Beecher watched them go, his heart aching, but curiously light at the same time.  
Two hours later, he was still standing there.

* * *

"Hello, Tobias."

He knew she was going to come by to see him. Eventually, she always did. But even when he heard Sister Pete's soothing voice, he didn't make a move or a sound.

"Are you there?" she asked after a moment or two of silence had elapsed.

"I'm here, Sister," he mumbled at last.

Sister Pete approached from Beecher's left side and stopped a couple of inches away, hoping maybe Beecher would turn his head. He didn't. She sighed and leaned her shoulder on the glass.

"Not there," he said. "Please."

She looked behind her, saw the handprint which she would have inadvertently smudged, and nodded. "Okay," she whispered, stepping back.

"I like that one the best," he said. "It's the clearer of the two."

She put her hand on his back and started to rub it in small figure-eights. "Tobias," she began again.

"I already know what you're going to say, Sister," he said, cutting her off. "He confessed to those murders, didn't he?"

She nodded. "All three of them. They're summoning a court reporter so that it will be on record."

Beecher's lip began to tremble as he drew in a shuddery breath. He turned to look at her and saw a tear in her eye too. It was the first time he had ever seen her cry over any of the prisoners in here, even the ones that had been executed, and he couldn't believe that after all the mind games and deception that he had subjected _her_ to that she was shedding a tear for him. How could that be fucking possible?

"I... I don't..."

The hand caressing his back went to his shoulder and gave it a gentle squeeze. "Now I know what you're going to say," she said, shaking her head. "I don't know what just happened either. Needless to say, I'm utterly at a loss for words." She regarded the handprint on the glass for a second and shrugged. "Christopher Keller finally did the right thing."

"Yeah," Beecher whispered as he wiped a tear off his chin.

"Personally, I'd like to think it was divine intervention," she commented.

"Divine intervention, you say?"

"Mmmmm-hmmmm."

"Like God finally did for Chris what he couldn't do for himself?"

"Yes," she said.

Beecher closed his eyes and sighed. "Well then," he said, "God sure is a funny fellow." He looked back out at the strip of the quad where he had observed McManus and Keller talking earlier. "You know, this morning after he and I had our little spat, I had decided to coöperate with the FBI and help them convict Keller."

"Oh?" she asked.

Beecher nodded. "Now that he's decided to fall on his own sword, that opportunity is gone and so is my chance at parole." He turned back to her, noticing that the tears in her eyes were now gone. His, on the other hand, were still burning in the corners of his eyes. "But then again," he continued, "if he had gone over that railing or killed himself in his sleep, I'd have been facing the death penalty."

"Yes," she said.

"Now _he's_ the one facing the death penalty again... or will be."

"It looks that way," Sister Pete agreed.

"So how the fuck is that more divine than him going over that railing?" he asked, pointing over her shoulder at it.

Sister Pete turned her head in the direction of the rail outside. For an instant, she saw the two of men tussling close to it and Keller cartwheeling over it while Beecher screamed in shock. "Because he finally did the noble thing and faced his consequences without dragging someone along for the ride," she finally answered, turning back to him. "And whether it was in an interrogation room with the FBI or in a courtroom during a trial for his murder, Chris spared you the indignity and unfairness of having to fight for your own life in the wake of a mess that he made. And that," she said, tapping him once on the shoulder with the pad of her index finger, "is not the Chris Keller you and I have known for all these years."

"So that's how God works in this place?" he asked her, thinking about all the hours he had spent with the late Kareem Saïd on a spiritual quest through the Quran.

"You don't see it often around here," Sister Pete acknowledged, "but when you do, it's pretty wonderful."

"Sister," Beecher said, finally straightening himself up and stepping away from the wall, "then why would God make something so wonderful so incredibly fucking painful?"

She folded her hands in front of her, and thought for a while. "I guess," she said, "because He thought we could handle it."

Beecher shook his head and closed his eyes. "Chris said he did everything he did out of love for me," he sighed, "and now that he's finally done something that makes me truly believe him, I have to be a man of my word and stay away... fucking let him face those consequences by himself." He rubbed at his eye with the heel of his hand. "You really think that God thinks I can handle that?"

"Yes Toby," she said quite strongly. "And I do too. After everything you've been through here in Oz, I most certainly do too."

His brow furrowed. "That's the first time in all these years that you've called me Toby," he noted.

She nodded. "I know."

"Beecher," came the call from the doorway of his pod.

He and Sister Pete turned to see McManus standing in the doorway, his back bent in that unmistakable stoop and his lips pursed together in that prissy way that was his trademark.

"Yeah?"

"I'm moving you down to Unit J," he said. "I'm concerned about the Aryans taking revenge on you for killing Schillinger."

Beecher felt a small part of him crumple inside that McManus made no mention of his meeting with Keller. Didn't the guy care?

 _No_ , a his mind whispered back, _he's running a prison ward, not the Love Boat._

"I said the same thing to Keller," he told him. "He said 'Don't worry, I've handled the Aryans.'"

"What did he mean by that?" Sister Pete asked.

Beecher simply shook his head and followed McManus out the door.

Five hours later, the prison was evacuated because a deadly chemical had spilled from a package in the mailroom where all the Aryans were working. All of them and two C.O.'s on duty were killed in seconds. That was when he, Sister Pete, and McManus finally knew. And as he sat on one of seven prison busses bound for Lardner, Beecher looked out the window and saw Keller with his wrists and ankles shackled, being bundled into the back of a secured black van that was going back to the FBI headquarters in New York City. As the van rolled away ahead of the line of busses, Beecher smiled and thought of all the crazy things people do for love.


End file.
